


Lord If I Make It Through Tonight

by yet_intrepid



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath, Gen, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Pre-Series, Recovery, Religious Conflict, Stanford Era, Suicidal Dean, Suicidal Sam, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 09:55:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2265363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Dean’s in California now. Just drove and ended up there, some instinct or beaten-in rule of existence pushing him towards Sam. Not that he’s gonna do Sam any good, he thinks as he pulls the bedroom curtains shut. He’s no good to anybody anymore. He’s a fucking waste of space, and all he’s got left are the knives on the bathroom counter and a bit of whiskey to see him through."</p><p>It’s the summer after Sam’s freshman year of college. Dean’s falling to pieces. So is Sam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Down There In The Dark

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was heavily inspired by the song "You or Your Memory" by the Mountain Goats, from which the title is drawn. 
> 
> Trigger warnings for the first chapter: suicide attempts, overdose, knives/blood, alcohol, vomit, and suicide shaming from an absent character. Please know your limits and read mindfully.

Sam has seven dollars and twenty-three cents left after renting the motel room. That’s okay, he tells himself. Soon, he’s not going to be worrying about money anymore.

So he heads out again with his key tucked safe in his pocket. Slips his shoes off in the parking lot like Dad taught him never to do, lets the heat of the pavement soak into him. He feels himself fading into the purple-gray dusk, into that soft empty peace. He imagines ceasing.

One last effort, he thinks. One last surge. One last turn in the road of controlling his own life.

Sam makes his way down the street. He puts on his shoes, goes into the convenience store, and walks out six minutes later with a bottle of extra-strength generic painkillers.

——

Dean spreads towels on the bathroom floor and changes into a pair of jeans that are already stained. He’s got three knives laid out on the sink counter, not sure yet which one he’s going with. But each of them is sharp and sterile; that was the first thing he made sure of. And each of them is solid in his hand.

He throws back some whiskey. Not enough to make him fumble, just enough for warmth and courage. Lets it soak into him, fill up the hole that’s sat there rotting since Sam walked away. Numb the ripped edges of Dad’s no-show back in Livingston, Montana.

It’s been a long drive since then. High speeds, not enough stops. Enough money for gas and the room, forgetting about food until he was twenty miles from an exit. And dialing, hitting Dad’s number over and over, every five freaking minutes sometimes. Voicemail.  _Dad hates me._  Voicemail. _Dad’s kicking me out and doesn’t even care enough to tell me._ Voicemail.  _Dad’s dead._

He’s in California now. Just drove and ended up there, some instinct or beaten-in rule of existence pushing him towards Sam. Not that he’s gonna do Sam any good, he thinks as he pulls the bedroom curtains shut. He’s no good to anybody anymore. He’s a fucking waste of space, and all he’s got left are the knives on the bathroom counter and a bit of whiskey to see him through.

——

Sam fills a whole bag with free ice on the way back, because he hates swallowing pills with tepid tap water. Pills are a bit tough. Dad made him take them dry a time or two, and he got them halfway down before his gag reflex kicked in and made him choke. His throat tightens just thinking about it and he tells himself that’s not going to happen tonight. Everything’s going to go nice and easy.

He gets into the room, sets the bag of ice in the sink, and finds a plastic cup. Then he gets the painkiller bottle out of the little box and punctures the seal under the cap. He sets the bottle on the sink counter, the cup beside it. Throws away his trash. And then he leans his hands on the counter, coming face to face with his reflection.

And what he sees is okay. Hoodie, t-shirt. Hair long but neat enough. The expression all earnestness and quiet concern, with no sign of disturbing depths.

What he sees is a college student, done with his first year and finishing up the summer. What he sees is wrong.

And he doesn’t want to be this anymore, doesn’t want to be what he shouldn’t, but he doesn’t know what he should be let alone how to be it, so he stares at himself desperately and just knows that he’s wrong, so wrong. This is the only way he knows to stop being wrong.

But then his breath hitches in his throat and he swings around, scrambles for the nightstand. There has to be a Gideon Bible somewhere, he thinks, and there is, with its green marbled cover and gold lettering. He falls heavily to sit on the edge of the bed. Oh God, he thinks, if he dies as wrong as he is, he won’t be free of it. He’ll be facing his fucked-up nature for time unending, and he’ll never be able to get away. He’ll be  _damned_.

Please, Sam starts to pray, half-wild in desperation as he flips through the pages looking for something,  _anything,_  that isn’t a list of ancient kings or a set of rules he knows he’s broken. Please, I just want to get fixed. I want to make you happy; I want to be good; I want to be pure. I want you to make me better. I want to change and I know I can’t do it myself; I’ve tried that. I—I heard you’re in the business of helping out?

He sticks his finger down on a page, blindly, the way he used to do as a kid. He turns up Psalms. _A broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise._

He tries to cling to it. Tries so goddamn hard. But now he’s remembering other snatches, something about  _the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked_  and if that’s true, how can God not despise it? Hell, Sam despises himself most of the time. Why would God want anything to do with Sam’s wicked and deceitful heart when Sam can’t stand to face it himself?

He puts the Bible down and slips to his knees by the bed, trying to reason through. If he pulls through this, he thinks at last, it’ll be a sign. A message saying he’s supposed to live, that God cares enough to get his hands dirty with the mess inside of Sam. And if he doesn’t pull through, well, he’ll find out quick enough if he’s saved or damned. Either way it will be over, and that will be enough. All he wants is a chord to resolve the chaotic music that has been his life, even if it ends in a minor key.

Sam gets off his knees and goes into the bathroom. The ice has started to melt.

——

If he’s still here tomorrow, Dean tells himself, he’ll go and see Sam. Check that he’s all right.

And then he’ll find a hunt. He’ll try his best to keep going, save some people, gank some monsters. If Bobby wouldn’t fill his chest with bullets, he’d go visit. Just because he wants to die doesn’t mean he’s good with seeing Bobby do it. He don’t like Bobby hating him. Even Dad he can deal with okay, because he knows he’s let Dad down every day of his fucking life, but Bobby never asked for a thing and if Dean knew how to make it right he would, but all he knows to do is stay away.

Still, Bobby’d know what to say. Bobby was the one who told them the news about Travis’s hunting partner, Glenn, who offed himself a year or two before Sam left. Dad started going on about cowardice, how sure, life’s a shithole, but Glenn could’ve just found a hunt and gone out that way if he was so eager. But Bobby shut him up good, and Sam sat there all quiet. Looked at Dean in that weird way Dean couldn’t ever get a read on. Dean wonders if Sam knew, back then, before he even knew it himself.

Because Dad would never understand, but Dean’s too tired to go find a hunt to die on. He’s been tired for years, dragging himself through because Sam needed him, because Dad needed him. At this level of exhaustion, he’s not going through the effort of tracking something just so his death looks a little braver. Besides, he can’t trust a monster the way he can trust his own two hands. If that makes him a coward, well, it’s just one more way for him to let Dad down.

He has another pull of whiskey and starts feeling around for the blood vessels in his forearms. He’s a little dehydrated, so they’re not popping up like they should, but he figures if he cuts diagonally he’ll catch them. He hefts each knife in turn, right hand then left. The smallest is the easiest to manage. He leaves the others on the counter, though, just in case for some reason this one won’t do the job.

Then he sits down on the towel-covered bathroom floor, the knife and the bottle beside him, and pulls his phone out of his pocket. Hits a few buttons. Waits. Waits.

Voicemail.

——

Sam’s got a cup with a good portion of half-melted ice, rounded out with tap water, in his right hand. In his left are two pills, and across the counter are sets of two, lined up to be scooped easily into his palm. His heart’s already pounding  fast and his head’s a little fuzzy.

Saved or damned. Saved or damned.

He remembers being five years old in Pastor Jim’s kitchen, praying that he could have a home with Jesus forever. He remembers being twelve in a church service, feeling so dark and lost and out of place. He remembers the nightmares after their first hunt involving a demon.

He remembers Pastor Jim’s voice.  _Salvation was created for sinners._ Remembers going to him with that big old Bible.  _God’s interested in your emotions, your beliefs, your thoughts, and your actions. Not just you obeying._ Remembers fleeting moments of peace and trust.  _He listens to you too, Sam._

Saved or damned.

He takes a sip of water, swallows hard. “Okay,” he says. “If you’re listening, then—then show me you don’t despise me. Because I’m pretty sure I’ve got that  _broken and contrite_ thing down.”

He puts the first pair of pills in his mouth and follows up with water. Doesn’t even gag as they go down.

——

Dean sets the phone aside and picks up the knife. It shouldn’t feel as strange in his hand as it does, he thinks. He might be a coward but he’s still a hunter, and he’s been carrying a pocketknife, at least, since he was four. He changes his grip, tries to get it to blend with his fingers.

Then he gives up. This doesn’t have to feel good. It’s not supposed to feel good. It just has to work. If he can’t even make this work, he really has gotten useless.

He lays the edge against his skin, and hunter’s instinct reemerges. Making the first quick, precise cut across his forearm requires no more thought.

——

The sets of pills are steadily disappearing. Sam needs to piss from all the water, but as he makes his way to the toilet he finds himself doubling over, crouching on the floor. God, but it feels just like food poisoning back in tenth grade. Which is to say, it feels hellish.

He drags himself up, uses the toilet, and heads back to the sink but when the cold water hits his gut it aches like fire and when he tries it again with tepid stuff from the tap he almost vomits. Get it together, Sam, he thinks, but then he’s buckling again and he’s just trying to breathe although isn’t the point to stop and he doesn’t know anymore, he doesn’t know, and so he takes another set of pills.

——

Dean starts feeling the blood loss pretty quick. Must’ve done it right, he thinks vaguely, and tries to pass the knife from the clean hand to the bloodied-up one so he can do the other arm. It slips, falls harmlessly onto the towels.

“Damn,” says Dean. He can’t really see where it is to pick it back up. He leans back against the wall and clutches at the bleeding because that’s what you’re supposed to do, put pressure, to make it stop. Stop bleeding. Right?

“Damn,” he says again. It hurts like hell.

——

Sam was at the sink a second ago and now he’s in front of the toilet and he’s not sure how it happened but—gross—it looks like he just threw up. He’s so tired. So tired. He just want these stupid freaking cramps to go away.

He’s sweating so hard, so he pulls off the hoodie, tangling himself in it before finally dropping it aside. Then he lies down on his side on the cool floor and aches and aches and aches. Then, mercifully, it all starts to fade, his vision going dusky purple-gray.

——

Dean slumps harder against the wall, lets his head droop. He feels all floppy, and he’s tired. He wants to not be tired. He wants to go to sleep, just rest for once in his life.

As he drifts, he thinks he hears his phone ringing.


	2. Walk The Straight Path

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for chapter two: suicide attempts, vomit, bad medical practice (canon-typical), and hospitalization (emergency room). Please know your limits and read mindfully.

There’s a noise, distant and loud and shrill. Sam struggles to think what it is. A siren, he finally thinks, and then: are there sirens in hell?

It’s so, so dark; his eyelids are too heavy to lift. And he’s lying on something hard and cold, and he’s shivering. He reaches out blindly, finds something warm and soft. Tangles his fingers in it and draws it to his chest.

The siren’s getting louder, or he’s getting more awake. If he sits up, he thinks, maybe he can figure out what’s going on. But as soon as he pushes himself up on one elbow, the nausea and the cramping start—start  _again_ , somehow he knows it’s again. Why doesn’t he know what happened?

With a deep breath and a giant surge of will, he sits up and feels around a little. Wall, doorknob—counter? He pulls himself up on the counter, unsteady with the cramps, and fumbles for a light switch.

A powerful headache washes over him as soon as the light flips on. He takes a moment to reckon with it, and then he surveys his surroundings. Some vomit beside the toilet; maybe he was drunk last night. A painkiller box in the trashcan.

And on the counter, a plastic cup, the painkiller bottle, and sets of pills in a tidy line.

Sam gets flashes. Still, he checks the bottle just in case. And sure enough, there are way too many gone for the box to be in the trashcan all by itself. If he opened that bottle just yesterday, well—

Maybe the siren is for him, he thinks. If it is, he’ll go. He’ll go.

He turns to open the bathroom door, planning to look out the window at the parking lot. But nausea and pain send him back to the floor, and the siren starts fading.

——

“Mr. Kessler?”

It’s the hospital voice. Dean knows the hospital voice. Knows it like he knows guns, ghosts, and Dad’s voicemail. “Yeah,” he says automatically. Oh man, what did he fuck up this time?

“Mr. Kessler, do you know where you are?”

“Hospital,” Dean says, without opening his eyes. Routine, routine.

“Do you remember what happened?”

Wow, okay, not routine. The question, sure. But the tone, nope.

He opens his eyes. A nurse is standing beside him and damn does she look worried, so he looks down at himself. Hospital gown. Bandaged forearm. IV line. Doesn’t look that bad, to be honest. Probably even something he could’ve handled himself.

“Uh,” he says. “No?”

She sighs, starts checking his vitals. The longer she goes without answering him, the more restless Dean gets. Finally, she finishes her checks and steps towards the door.

“Hey,” says Dean. “Can’t you tell me—”

“The doctor will be with you in a moment,” says the nurse, and steps out the emergency room hallway.

Dean stares after her. Looks down at himself again. Puts the pieces together.

“Fuck,” he whispers.

——

By seven o’clock, Sam’s spent three hours detoxing from his overdose and one researching what he’s done to himself. He’s learned that he didn’t take enough to be fatal, or even to have a significant chance of liver damage. And he’s learned that the immediate-onset symptoms that stopped him from taking more aren’t particularly common with the painkillers he had.

Sam shuts his computer and sits down on the bed, running a hand through his sweat-laced hair. He’s alive, and he’s not in hell, and maybe the cramps were just a biological reaction but then again maybe they weren’t. It’s as good a sign as any, he decides. He’ll go back to school when it starts in two weeks, and until he’ll make it somehow. Maybe when he gets back he’ll even see the school counselor, just to talk about getting kicked out and missing Dean and feeling lost, so lost, for a whole year. Hell, he could even try antidepressants, he thinks, and he hears Dean’s voice in his head:  _that is way too healthy; I am officially uncomfortable._

But Sam isn’t healthy. He’s fucked up. He just wants to  _stop_  being fucked up.

By eight o’clock, Sam wheels his bike out of the motel room. He’s cleaned up his mess to avoid any extra charges and checks out with no complaints. He doesn’t want to go, but he’s down to his last three dollars, and at that point looking for work outweighs feeling like shit.

He’s gonna make it, he tells himself.

——

“We’re obligated to monitor you for twenty-four hours,” the doctor explains. “Someone will check on you every fifteen minutes. If you feel a return of suicidal urges, we’ll monitor you more closely. If you have stabilized at the end of the twenty-four hour period, you can be released without hospitalization, but we strongly encourage you to participate in one of our outpatient programs. While you are here, a psychologist is available for you to speak with, as well as chaplains of several major faiths.”

Dean shrugs. “I’ll stick with the nurses, thanks. Specially, what’s-her-name, Lydia.” He smirks, trying not to let his exhaustion show through. “You can send  _her_  in every fifteen minutes.”

The doctor smiles patiently. “Do you have any questions, Mr. Kessler? About your treatment or otherwise?”

“No. –Wait, wait, yeah.”

“What’s that?” she asks.

Dean hesitates. “My phone,” he says. “When I passed out, I thought I heard my phone go off. It was right beside me in the bathroom; is there any chance somebody brought it? I—I’ve been trying to get hold of my dad, see.”

The doctor’s brow creases. “I don’t know that it’d be wise for you to make a call like that right now, Mr. Kessler. I can tell it’s a source of stress and anxiety for you.”

“Please,” Dean says. “He’s not been answering. I—I need to know he’s okay.”

She nods. “How about this? Give me the number, and I’ll have the front desk place the call for you. We’ll tell you what he says.”

Dean bites his lip, then rattles off the number. The doctor takes it down, smiles at him. He smiles back, a little shakily. “Thanks,” he says. “Just…don’t let them tell him what I did, okay? They can say I’m in the hospital, that’s fine. But the rest, uh, I want to tell him that myself.”

Which is a goddamn lie, and the doctor looks like she knows it. But she nods again, and Dean thanks her again, and he lies back and waits to hear that it was voicemail.

——

Sam bikes through the city, searching out the kind of places that take short-term workers, hopefully the kind that pay cash by the day. He doesn’t know where he’ll go tonight—he could bike the three hours back to Palo Alto, maybe, slip into the little rental storage unit he pre-paid for at the beginning of the summer to keep all his school stuff, curl up on the floor there with his quilt. God, that sounds nice right now. So much better than backtracking all over San Francisco, where there’s ten times more work but he doesn’t know how to find any of it.

By noon he’s found six places and gotten six  _no_ ’s. He’s thirsty and dizzy and probably pale as death, which would explain why nobody wants to hire him. He takes a break in a public library, drinking greedily from the water fountain and washing his face in the bathroom.

And then he comes out, unchains his bike, and turns towards Palo Alto. Three more hours and he can sleep in his own quilt.

He’ll worry about work again when he wakes up.

——

“Your dad says he’s in Livingston, Montana,” Lydia the nurse tells Dean when he next wakes up. “Like you asked, we didn’t tell him the situation, but he says he can start driving this direction after he gets off work tonight.”

Dean nods. “Okay,” he says. “I can meet him a little ways out—it’s what, sixteen hours from Livingston to here? And if he doesn’t get off work till, say, six, he won’t be here by the time I check out. I mean, no offense, sweetheart, but I’m not really the kinda guy that sticks around.”

Lydia doesn’t acknowledge that. “Are you sure you’re stable enough to be driving?” she asks instead.

Dean laughs, actually laughs out loud. “You think I’d try and crash my  _car_?” he says, incredulous. “I’ve never put a scratch on her. Driving’s the safest I can be, I swear.”

And then he’s smiling, too, thinking about driving, thinking about just the right spin on the wheel and delicate pressure on the brakes and gas. He could live just for that.

Lydia’s looking at him, tilting her head. “What?” she asks.

Dean grins up at her. “I can’t wait to drive again,” he says.

——

Sam wakes up on another cold floor, but this time he’s wrapped in a blanket he knows. His stomach aches, but only dully from hunger. He’s still got three dollars, and he’s back in a city he knows, one where he’s never tried to kill himself. It’s a new start. Another one.

It’s six o’clock. He gets up, sorts some things out of his backpack so it’s lighter, and wheels his bike out when he’s pretty sure no one is looking (after all, respectable college students don’t sleep in their storage units.) If he hasn’t found work in three hours, he tells himself, he’ll head to that little diner with the free wifi and the coffee refills and do some more tailored searching. He’ll be okay. He’ll really and truly be okay.

——

Dean checks out of the hospital at eight (twenty-nine hours, okay, whatever) and is halfway to Palo Alto (which is not on the way from San Francisco to Livingston, but he’s got time before Dad will expect him) before he realizes he has no clue where Sam is staying for the summer. Sam had called once, back in June, but the conversation had consisted of little more than “I’m fine” and “I think I’ve done seven salt-and-burns in two weeks” and “I miss classes” and “of course you do, nerd.” They hadn’t actually  _said_  anything.

It’s okay. Dean figures he’ll just drive around for a while. It’ll make him feel better, being near Sam, and if he ever has a right to that, he does now.

He passes a diner, thinks about going in for something other than hospital food. But the engine’s swelling and the light turns green and he wants to hold the wheel steady, wants to drive on straight ahead.

“Another time,” he murmurs, and he digs around for the tape he wants as he rolls through the intersection.

——

It’s all the coffee on an empty stomach, Sam tells himself, when he glances up from his computer and thinks he catches sight of a too-familiar car. It’s the exhaustion. It’s the aftermath of your damn overdose.

He rubs at his eyes, empties his third mug of coffee, tries to look back at the job ads on the screen and in the newspaper in front of him. His waitress comes by.

“Hey, Sam,” she says.

He tries to smile. “Hey, Emma.”

“You’re killing a lot of time here today.” She fills up his mug. “Nowhere else to be, huh? Summer getting old?”

He indicates the newspaper and computer. “Not so much killing time as looking for a way to do something useful with it. My last job cut out on me and there’s still two weeks before school starts.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Rob’s been looking for someone to fill in. I mean, not like working here is great, but if you only need it for two weeks, it’s not that bad. And he already kind of knows you, which doesn’t hurt.”

“No, yeah, that’s great!” Sam gets to his feet. “Can I talk to him?”

“Let me do it,” Emma says. “Hang on, back in a sec.”

Sam’s heart surges. He gets his computer put away and folds up the newspaper. Then, sipping nervously at his fourth cup of coffee, he waits for Emma to come back.

When she does, he knows the news by her smile.

“He can start you now,” she says. “And he said to get some food in you first, because employees aren’t at their most productive when they’re about to collapse.”

Signs upon signs, thinks Sam, as he grabs his bag and follows her back to the kitchen. Tiny, just-enough, lifesaving signs.


End file.
